She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. [1]

You can trace my life's journey through the books I’ve held. Like footprints, the lightest and darkest moments of my life can be traced along the inked impressions and faded curvatures of lines under select passages in books that line my library walls.

I am an avid reader and book collector for the same reason that drives Umberto Eco’s collection of over 30,000+ volumes in his library:

‘He separates visitors into two categories: those who react with ‘Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of those books have you read?’ and the others -a very small minority- who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.’ [2]

Unread books are tantamount to a foreign path forking into a strange wood, or an untried exotic dish, or evocative images of a distant country one has yet to visit. Read books are conversations with contemporaries (if you are reading any author, regardless of era, it is an intimate, contemporary conversation). Regarding these read books, I, like many voracious readers who experience a book or poem that ‘takes the top of your head off’ (Emily Dickinson), I want to share, I want my friends to experience the journey. Below you will find a growing collection of my most treasured reads, be they poems, short stories, novels, food writing, essays, or art books. Unlike Art Garfunkel, who has kept track of every book he has ever read, I have not kept record and, though many books are seared in my mind, for some I must find recourse in the tramontane territory of memory but I hope to keep slowly adding to the list.

One important note: for a bibliophile, book lists are polarizing. Read any ‘Top 100′ booklist (100 Best Novels, Books of the Century, Best Fiction of the Millennium) and you’ll likely respond as I do: ‘How dare they not include [insert title]?’ or ‘How could they rate [insert title] first?’. Favorite books or stories are as polymorphous as the human race, splintering into multiple branches of genres, tastes, predilections, and personal appetite. ‘Favorite books’ are as particular as ‘favorite food': what I love you might hate, what you might be in the mood for now is not what you’ll be in the mood for later, but what we will both find is adventure in the attempt tried for ‘every reader is either a pausing wanderer or a traveler returned’ (Alberto Manguel).

'Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.' [3]

This list also represents a failed attempt at compiling my favorite one hundred books. Failed, because my brain short-circuited over the deliberation. What if, upon finishing the book I am currently reading (All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren), I decide it belongs on my list? Due to the constraints of only one hundred, I must constantly compare Tolstoy against Dostoevsky, Frost versus Eliot, Vidal against Buckley, or Stegner versus Faulkner. The constant addition and subtraction led to endless bickering in my head; instead, I chose an indolent escape: a booklist in perpetuity.

Book lists and personal libraries illuminate subterranean characteristics. David Bowie is clearly a lover of language and eccentricity (no surprise). Art Garfunkel is voracious and versatile; Neil Peart, cerebral and curious. More than once I have been at an estate sale, purchasing books from a previous owner’s library and as I peruse their shelves, I begin to know them: some collect medieval literature or books on Catholicism, most have a penchant for particular authors or specific genres. Book passions are as revealing as DNA. If you were to suddenly inherit my library, you would possess classic lit, well written modern lit, food books, art books (Impressionism mostly) scads of compilations of short stories, essays, and memoirs, many books on poetry, creativity/writing and history, philosophy and spirituality.

Ultimately, a favorite book discussion is a medium of exchange, a quid pro quo transacted in private conversation, so please consider this my part of the verbal exchange: ‘Have you read … ?’ or ‘You must read … !’ (I hope you let me know if I tipped you off to an exotic locale or a sublime dish you’ve never tasted and also, in return, tell me of the books I should read as well). And bear in mind Francis Bacon’s counsel: ‘Some books are meant to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and digested with diligence and attention’.